Worlds Within Worlds Co-evolving designers and critics Bio-inspired design processes Gregory Hornby, UC Santa Cruz Jordan Pollack, Brandeis University Hod Lipson, Cornell University

Conclusions Evolutionary design –Open ended, creative –Challenged by scalability, vague design goals Evolve designers, not designs –Generative systems that capture design rules Evolve critics that represent user tastes –Provoke users to learn their goals & preferences Algebra of user models and designers –Use multiple models to influence multiple designers

Evolution

Lipson & Pollack, Nature 406, 2000

X-band antenna for NASA's ST-5 Mission

Evolving Photonic Structures With Preble, Gondarenko, Robinson, Physical Review Letters, May 2006

Kinematic Synthesis Peaucelier (1873) Silverster-Kempe (1877)

Evolutionary design –Open ended, creative –Challenged by scalability, vague design goals

Evolving Designers

Encoding designers with Modularity, Regularity and Hierarchy Design Program:Executed Instructions: Graphical version:

Evolving Table Designers Evolving tables: fitness = height*surface area*stability/material. No MRH enabled: MRH enabled:

Evolved Tables Table fitness = height*surface*volume / material

Families of Designs Height: A single design program can be used to evolve a family of designs:

Evolving Critics

A Simple Critic

Confidence vs. Uncertainty

Walter Benjamin

Louisville, KY, USA FabLab, Pretoria, South Africa Rockefeller Univ., New York, USAScience Museum, London, UK

Watch band and Lego™ tire printed on a

User 1 User 2 User 1 Algebra of user models

Conclusions Evolutionary design –Open ended, creative –Challenged by scalability, vague design goals Evolve designers, not designs –Generative systems that capture design rules Evolve critics that represent user tastes –Provoke users to learn their goals & preferences Algebra of user models and designers –Use multiple models to influence multiple designers